Our Little Game
by Meltmyhearttostone
Summary: Helen and Nikola have been dancing around each other for a century, Nikola finally puts and end to it.


The later it got, the more they drank, and the more they drank, the higher his hand wandered up her thigh. They always found themselves in this spot. Surrounded by the laden air of lust and flirtation. Somehow, the atmosphere of 'what could be' is denser due to their time together. Growing as they grew, becoming more and more apparent by each year.

They were coming up to the point where one of them would call it off. Feigning the need for sleep, or "I'm afraid a large stack of paperwork needs my attention," or possibly the most devastating, "we can't." One of them would always stop this when it got to the apex point and walk away, with both of them feeling a little bit more than unsettled. But this time it is different. They lingered longer than usual, and his breath seemed heavier on her cheek. There was no causality in his glances. His stare held intent, and his slight touches appeared to be more out of necessity than him just cheekily stealing advances.

"Helen, you have about twenty seconds to run before we reach the point of no return." Helen chuckled, a sly smile appearing on her face as she ran the back of her knuckles across his cheek.

"My dear Nikola, aren't we always twenty seconds away from something?" He scoffed in response, and, pulling back from her space, took a sip of his wine trying to hide a slight smirk.

"I've missed you," Nikola confessed, absently running his index finger over the hem of her skirt on the outside of her upper thigh in an attempt to downgrade his admission. Helen looked at him, studying his expression. He was hiding something; his face was angled away from her in a way that she could see his face fully but he didn't have to look at the expressions on hers. He was bracing himself for her impending rejection. Focusing on something far past her as if it would somehow make her understand that this time was different. There was no smirky grin or lewd undertones to Nikola's exclamations of affection. Instead, his usual prurient manner was replaced with a vulnerability that Helen hadn't seen in a long time. It was childlike almost. Full of promise, possibility and insatiable passion but tinged with deep-seated fragility, making him utterly unreachable. Helen didn't like the idea of a breakable Nikola.

"Nikola I-"

"Don't do that."

"Do what?

"No Helen! No!" He stood up with a jolt, no longer contemplative. Helen was taken aback; she found herself sitting farther into the couch with her back a little straighter. Not knowing what to make of this, Nikola typically took the excuses well. He would refute his failure with a joke, devalue his devotion with the casualty of a game of chase. She never witnessed him like this, his shoulders were rigid, and his face had fallen to the degree that she had never seen before - intensely vulnerable and yet so outwardly hostile.

"Why must you always do this to me! Wind me up like your personal plaything and then watch the deflation for your own amusement. It's sick Helen, really, get a new hobby" The last jab he emphasized with the classic Tesla stance, hand on his hip hotly with his chin tilted upward.

"I'm not trying to-"

"Oh, you're not trying to devastate me? This whole decade of flirtation was just accidental" Nikola spat out caustically, drinking the rest of his wine in one gulp and slammed it back down on her desk in a loud clammer, causing Helen's spine to become just that fraction more rigid.

"Please, Helen" Nikola continued, "there has never been a single moment of your life that wasn't calculated." With a flourish Nikola turned his back to her, running his hand through his hair in acrimony. He took a step back from her, allowing them both some breathing room. Their heated conversation was becoming progressively corrosive, stinging away more and more space. She looked down, channeling her anxiety into her fingers which were dancing nervously over her knees. Nikola turned around to face her again, begging her to look up and see what she had done. He was defeated. The great Nikola Tesla, the inventor of the modern generation, was brought down, ruined, by a woman who's heart will never be his. The realization made him chuckle bitterly under his breath - oh the things he could have accomplished if he wasn't weighed down by his love for her. He would have ruled the world, and this little tryst wouldn't be a problem. At that moment he wondered if he would've been happier if she wasn't in his life, his years of pinning for her was, in actuality, the only thing that ever slowed him down. This rejection was different. He could feel his memories of the past decade or so turn bitter, what used to be a game of cat and mouse, full of suggestive remarks and witty advances, had developed into something darker, deeper, and meaner. Something that consumed him whole. What he worked so hard for had now, tinged with regret, become something he wanted to run from.

He felt antsy, peering back down at his empty wine glass on the desk, he looked around the room, and it didn't even register as a place he felt at home. Glancing back at Helen, she still would not look at him, her head hung in what Nikola assumed was something akin to shame, her eyes focused solely on her fidgeting fingers, not daring to look up at him. Nikola let out one last frustrated laugh, a sound bordering on a repine of desperation but was strained enough to reveal the utter exasperation that rooted him to this spot - standing in Helen's office. It was their past, all of those journeys, and their ever-dwindling future, that brought him to where he was today - standing in front of the women he loved who would rather grab anxiously at her tights then confront what was happening. Standing alone as the sacrifice to Helen and his century-long game. They were the lone survivors, and him as her last victim.

"I should leave, you have no use for me here."

Helen looked up slightly, her eye line wavering just above Nikola's knees, not being able to look at his face quite yet. He headed for the door, pulling the handle open in frustration. He looked back at her and waited. Waited for some resemblance of hope. Waited for Helen to look up at him. With all his bitter resentment towards her, he still would turn the world upside-down to merely look into her eyes. Through all her changes her eyes have always stayed the same. When Helen didn't look up Nikola, desolate and empty, exhaled heavily; bitterly - resolutely leaning against the door frame.

All Helen had to do was look at him, say his name, tell him to stay. But she couldn't. For a century Helen had mulled over her intentions with Nikola, always finding him a far too risky an option. He never stayed in one place, his plans were always centered around world domination, and his flirtation, while flattering, was perpetually surface level. But now that he was here, he seemed to have no plans of going anywhere. They had a routine, he brought her tea in the mornings and checked in on her at night, and against her best judgment, she was growing quite fond of having him around.

All she had to do was look up at him, tell him to stay. But she couldn't. All she could do was just sit there, letting her fingers rip holes in her black tights; while her insecurity tore a hole in her heart as Nikola left her office, slamming the door behind him.


End file.
